Charlie Cawood

Charles Dennis Cawood (born 19 March 1988) is an English multi-instrumental musician, composer and music journalist, known for his cross-disciplinary musical skills as well as his work with a wide variety of projects and artists.

An active member of Kyros from 2023 to 2026, Lost Crowns, Knifeworld, Mediaeval Baebes, My Tricksy Spirit, Join the Din and Tonochrome (as well as a regular collaborator with The Anchoress), Cawood has worked in art rock, pop, folk and early music as well as Indian, Chinese and Balinese music and a variety of other forms. He has also released two solo albums of ensemble instrumental music. He played on Lucid, the 2014 solo album by The Fierce and the Dead guitarist Matt Stevens.

Biography

Background and influences

While still a teenager, Cawood became interested in the music of other cultures. Learning flamenco guitar at Escuela de Baile, he also branched out into studying the music of India, China and Bali via the Asian Music Circuit, learning the sitar under Mehboob Nadeem and the Chinese pipa lute under Cheng Yu (leader of the UK Chinese Music Ensemble) during summer schools at the Royal Academy of Music).

Cawood graduated from both the Guitar Institute and the London Centre of Contemporary Music, gaining a Bachelor's degree in Popular Music Performance and Production. He went on to gain a Master's degree in Music Performance at SOAS, specialising in composition and in the music of East Asia and Southeast Asia). In 2006, at the age of eighteen, he toured as a backup guitarist for Icelandic alt-folk singer Hafdis Huld, during which time he also made his debut radio broadcast on Gideon Coe's BBC 6 Music show. Between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one, Cawood played guitar and bass guitar in Achilla, a Gothic progressive metal band (also featuring future Haken keyboard player Diego Tejeida) which got strong reviews from Metal Hammer for their eponymous debut EP (plus an 8/10 live review).

Main work as band member

Cawood is currently the principal backing instrumentalist and co-arranger for Mediaeval Baebes (for whom he plays up to eight different instruments on tour). As of 2020, he has performed a similar role for the Anchoress.

As an art-rock/progressive rock band member, Cawood is the bass guitarist for Kyros and Lost Crowns, and the guitarist for art-pop group Tonochrome. and previously played guitar for the Frank Zappa cover band Spiders of Destiny. and currently performs hammer dulcimer with occasional sea shanty band Admirals Hard (alongside Knifeworld/Lost Crowns bandmates Kavus Torabi and Richard Larcombe plus other London-based art rockers).

Classical and world music work

As a classical musician, Cawood is best known for having performed the pipa part for the UK premiere of Philip Glass' chamber opera Sound of a Voice Central Asian music (on oud, bağlama and pipa) with Uzbek singer Alla Seydalieva, and Turkish/Romani music with Opaz Ensemble. He was also part of the Anatolian folk-fusion group which later launched the career of Olcay Bayir. As a gamelan musician, he's worked with LSO Community Gamelan Group and Lila Cita.

Work as project leader and composer

In addition to his work as a supporting player, Cawood composes his own instrumental music. He has stated that although his music refers to and is influenced by avant-garde music, he doesn't aim to be avant-garde himself, preferring to produce "accessible" music. His debut solo album, The Divine Abstract was released on the Bad Elephant Music label on 3 November 2017. Blending multiple aspects and influences from Cawood's career to date, the album featured twenty-one musicians drawn from his varied other bands and projects, including Mediaeval Baebes, Tonochrome, Knifeworld and assorted musicians associated with his SOAS alma mater. The Divine Abstract also featured forty-two different instruments drawn from European, Chinese, Indian and Middle Eastern traditions – various guitars and lutes; assorted keyboards, woodwinds, reeds, brass and strings; erhu, sitar, pipa, and a variety of percussion instruments from tuned Western orchestral to gamelan. The Divine Abstract received rave reviews, mostly from progressive rock magazines and websites.

Cawood's second solo album, Blurring into Motion, was released in 2019. Featuring a more Western-orientated instrumental palette, it featured two writing-and-performance collaborations with iamthemorning singer Marjana Semkina of as a guest vocalist on two tracks, and (bar returning cor anglais player Ben Marshall) a mostly new sixteen-strong cast of supporting musicians including percussionist Beibei Wang, London Myriad Ensemble flautist Julie Groves, VÄLVĒ harpist Elen Evans, cellist Maddie Cutter (Parallax Orchestra, Anna Meredith) and fellow composer-instrumentalists Maria Moraru (Pandora Jodara, Lullabies for the New Normal, Modulus Quartet, Mediaeval Baebes) and Thomas Stone. As was the case with its predecessor, the album was well received by reviewers.

Teaching and journalism

Cawood also works as an educator and writer. He teaches at the part-time guitar courses at the London Centre of Contemporary Music (part of the London College of Creative Media) and at All About the Band (a workshop for teenage musicians in the London borough of Southwark). He is a contributing writer for the folk and world music magazine Songlines.

Personal life In 2023 Cawood came out as a non-binary man and since adopted he/they pronouns. Lucie Treacher: Wunderkabinett EP (self-released, 2017) - guitar and bass guitar on 'Cross Fire' Matt Calvert: Typewritten (Truant Recordings, TRNT001, 2018) - dulcimer on 'Mute Heart' Sterbus: Real Estate/Fake Inverno (Zillion Watt Records, STRB01, 2018) - sitar on 'Maybe Baby' and 'Micro New Wave'; electric & 12-string guitars on 'Maybe Baby' UPF: Planetary Overload - Part 1: Loss (Giant Electric Pea, 2019) - zhongruan, pipa, liuqin and electric guitar on 'Cruel Times'; oud, bağlama, bouzouki, dulcimer, zither and bass guitar on 'Forgive Me My Son' Marco Ragni: Oceans of Thought (Melodic Revolution Records, MRRCD22178, 2019) - sitar on 'Voice in the Dark' Evan Carson: Ocipinski (Evan Carson Music, ECMCD001, 2019) - zither, cuatro, bouzouki, oud, acoustic guitar, acoustic bass Nick Marsh: Waltzing Bones (Belissima, BELISS05, 2020) - liuqin, dulcimer, zither Chlöe Herington: Silent Reflux (Believers Roast, BR2 6CD, 2021) - bağlama, oud The Witching Tale: The Witching Tale (Bellissima – BELLIS 07, 2021) - credited performer, no specifics Greta Aurora: Dying Venus EP (Falling A, 2022) - acoustic bass, dulcimer, zither, electric guitar & bass guitar on 'The Hourglass', 'Venus Without Furs' and 'My Apocalypse